Michelle Trachtenberg:

On Ice

by Lynn B.

Buffy’s little sis may have fought demons in the fires of hell but she’s also at home on an icy pond; at least she is in her new Disney film Ice Princess. If you’ve ever seen Harriet the Spy, Michelle Trachtenberg’s first big feature film, or followed her through several “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” seasons and a teen Eurotrip, you’ve watched the actress grow and blossom into a gorgeous young woman, never more so than as a graceful figure skater.

Michelle knew how to skate but admits that she had to go through some rough training and torn ligaments to achieve at least the look of competitive skater status. When we spoke with the actress in L.A.’s Century City, she breezed into the room looking more like a breath of Spring than a ski or skate bunny. Her black tank top over a long peasant skirt and sandal heels, gave Michelle an elegant bohemian look. The first thing she uttered upon seeing a giant poster from the film with not one but two Michelles prominently displayed was “Whoa, Wow, that’s big!” It went on from there. Michelle is funny, far from shy, loves to chat and will dish on anything from her cool boyfriend actor Shawn Ashmore to falling on her fanny.

Get some hot cocoa and curl up in front of your computer screen while we transport you into the world of an Ice Princess…

AGW: So is this your Million Dollar Baby?; a big sports movie for you?

Michelle: Yes. I really struggled with the lack of makeup in this role and just being — no, I’m kidding. In the physical sense, it is. I trained extremely hard for the movie. When we weren’t shooting, I was working, training five hours a day, five days a week, and I had ballet every other day. I was constantly on the ice. And then when we were shooting, I was working seven days a week, 20-22 hour days. Everyone else was pretty much a minor, (Michelle is 19) so after 10 hours, they went home and I was still there on ice skates, working my way around.

AGW: Did you hurt yourself at all?

Michelle: I did. I tore a couple of ligaments, dislocated a knee. It sounds really bad, but those are all things that happen to athletes. I’m very lucky because I didn’t get any stress fractures. When I was 8 or 9, I was like ‘oh, I want to be an ice skater’. And I took one lesson and it was like ‘heh, heh,. no. I’ll stick to acting, thank you’. But, I was obsessed with Michelle Kwan and Oksana Baiul, they were just perfect. When Disney came to me with this movie, I was like ‘okay! I can ice skate. No problem. I did it at a party once’. They were like, ‘yeah, right’. But it’s really cool because one day my coach came up to me and she said, ‘If you had started this when you were five years old, you'd be able to do those double axles and everything.’ So I was sort of natural at it, which was kind of fun.

AGW: How many falls did you take?

Michelle: A few. That’s probably why my knee cap’s off kilter because when you’re doing a spiral, you put all your weight on the knees. But, unless you’re doing crazy jumps, you can sort of prevent yourself from falling. You can see the distance and feel yourself on the ice, but I fell a couple of times in front of a couple of thousand extras. That was awesome. They’re like, ‘Yeah, Dawn fell on her (fanny)!’ But for the most part, they were all very nice, so I laughed. When you laugh, it all goes away.

AGW: What moves were you able to do at the end of training?

Michelle: I do waltz jumps and I can land a single toe loop which was the day I think literally the entire ice rink started cheering. It wasn’t like the most perfect form but my toe pick stuck in the ice which was all I wanted. I do a lot of the party tricks like the spirals and crossovers, but my big thing, which none of my doubles could do is an outside edge spreadeagle which is basically your feet in one line and you’re leaning back on the outside edge and going around on a curve, and not even a lot of skaters who are Olympic levels can do that because it depends on how your body’s set up. There’s one shot in the movie where it starts out on my feet and just moves up and it’s just across the entire rink. I’m very proud of that shot.

AGW: Do you think you’ll ever just go out and skate again?

Michelle: You never know. I’m honestly very busy right now with acting stuff because that is my first and foremost. To be an athlete takes a grueling amount of discipline. I don’t know that I have that focus right now because it’s all about acting. I think in a couple of years my friend’s going to have an ice skating party, and I’m going to be like ‘watch what I can do. Who thinks they’re cool now?’

AGW: You say you admired Michelle Kwan. What was it like meeting her?

Michelle: Amazing. It was so cool. I was just like the biggest nerd. It was like ‘you’re Michelle Kwan!’. That was literally the first thing I said. It was like ‘really?’ ‘cause she didn’t know she was Michelle Kwan. I had to tell her. She was so cool and so nice, and she was just supposed to do a cameo in the movie.

AGW: Then she ends up as a commentator. Did you ever get on the ice with her?

Michelle: Someone asked her if she would get on the ice with me, so we all expected Michelle Kwan to be like ‘well, no, I’m sorry’ but she got on the ice with me, skated around. First of all, to see her on the ice is like I would imagine watching Sean Penn or Dustin Hoffman work. It’s just so effortless and brilliant. And she turned around to me and said ‘you’re good. You’re a natural for what time you’ve had and what you’ve accomplished. I’m impressed’. So that to me that was the utmost compliment. She’s a really cool girl.

AGW: Your character Casey is a Math whiz. How about you?

Michelle: It’s funny. I hate Math. I’m just going to get it out there. When I was in school I always thought Math was stupid and pointless until one day my teacher came up to me and he was like ‘yeah. It’s pointless. You won’t ever use Pythagorean theorems, you won’t ever apply any of these formulas, but you can solve problems. Math teaches you logic’, so that was one way I was able to accept Math for getting to points a, b and c. That’s how I connected.

AGW: So was physics even harder? Casey is a whiz at that too.

Michelle: I actually understood the physics. I was really proud of myself. I was like writing things out. I’m like ‘oh, I’m so smart, I remember these things!’ And I was able to write it out and then it was checked by a physics person, and they’re like, ‘yeah, that’s great, she’s good’. Every theory that I say in the movie, every physics ‘shout out’ is all correct. We didn’t want to teach any kids wrong.

AGW: This movie is about moms and daughters. Is your own mom more like Kim Cattrall’s character or your movie mom Joan Cusack?

Michelle: Actually not like either mom. She is really proud of me, and is really happy that I’m doing something that I love and am most passionate about, but when I started acting, the first thing she said was, ‘Great. If you want to be an actress, that’s awesome (but) you have to go to school. You have to have your education, that’s first and foremost, and everything else comes separate’. She’s never a stage mom. So she never pushed any of her particular ideals or opinions on me.

AGW: So is she glad now that you picked acting?

Michelle: She’s very supportive and of course now she’s like ‘oh, I’m happy that you stuck with the acting thing. You’re so pretty out there honey’. She gets so excited. Like we just got Tivo and she put my name in and now she watches every single thing. I’m like, ‘Mom, no, just don’t.’ She’s like, ‘But look, that episode from when you were five is on.’ I’m like,‘Yeah, I can’t watch it.’ She gets really excited.

AGW: Casey has to work in a burger stand. Ever have any bad high school jobs?

Michelle: No, I’ve been acting since I was three, so I’ve never known any other job. One day I worked at a friend’s store and (laughs) I’m so good at sales. It was a baby store and I sold like $5,000 worth of baby stuff in one day. I was literally pulling people off the street. It was like ‘You need to buy this for the baby. This is perfect and it’s so pretty’ or ‘you’re going to have babies (some day) so you should be prepared’. That was really fun because I actually got to see and talk to people. The one thing that you don’t get with movies is that you don’t actually get to experience the people that you’re putting these things out for. With sitcoms, the audience is right there. You can hear them laugh immediately. TV it’s right away.

AGW: Was it fun shooting in Toronto?

Michelle: Toronto was great. My first movie was in Toronto 10 years ago, which was Harriet The Spy. Driving by the Sutton Place (Hotel) which was where I stayed when I was 10, I was like (gasp) I remember what that feeling was that first day walking into the big hotel. It was really cool. My boyfriend’s from Toronto. Well, he’s from B.C. but has a place in Toronto.

AGW: And that would be cool X-Man Shawn Ashmore. How did you ever meet an X-Man?

Michelle: Well, I put out an add in the classifieds: ‘Wanted, superhero. I’m a damsel in distress’. No, we just met, which is funny, knowing Shawn, he hates anything about publicity. He‘s so not into that world. We met at an Oscar party and he was just like Mr. Grumpy unhappy to be out in public and I totally approached him. I was the forward one, I take full credit and actually, we’ve been together a year. (We chat on how weird it is that his X-Men character is named “Iceman”).

AGW: Someone tells Casey that the real her only comes out in her skating. So you feel that way about your acting?

Michelle: Every character that I play is like a tiny per cent of my personality sort of heightened. So I’m also very adamant about never really playing the same character again. That’s sort of a struggle and I guess my personality comes through in the skating in terms of Casey because that’s like the stronger and powerful side. I think in acting not necessarily the real me comes out but just parts. The real me is sitting at home, no makeup, in my old sweatpants, watching DVDs. And no makeup is a big thing because I love makeup. So that’s me. I’m there clicking on my Tivo watching‘Law And Order’ with my sister because I’m obsessed.

AGW: We hear you’ve already done a DVD commentary on this film.

Michelle: Yes. Actually, Trevor (Blumas) and I and Kirsten Olson did it together. It was weird because I so am not a fan of watching my own work. I’m the most critical person. We’re talking about ‘oh my god, bad hair day! Really bad hair day’! Like you could sort of fix everything that you wanted to when you were shooting.

AGW: Do you have a favorite deleted or added scene?

Michelle: Well, there was one thing missing when we were filming. I wanted a scene in there for my character to come right out and say, ‘I want to ice skate, this is my passion, this is what I want most in the world’ and it wasn’t there. That was something that I felt little girls and their moms can connect to more than anything because how can you deny anyone their passion? I mean, my mom didn’t deny it for me and that’s been an awesome thing. So when we did reshoots, they wrote that scene. I was doing the DVD commentary and I was just like ‘this is the scene that I wanted more than anything, and I hope everyone loves it because I think it’s one of the best scenes in the movie’.

AGW: But you didn’t let them film you while you were commenting on the DVD?

Michelle: No, no. Because I’m just a spaz. That’s what Casey and I relate to. I’ll be just like walking and I can trip over my own feet. I’ve actually tripped standing, which I don’t understand. It’s weird. My boyfriend thinks it’s cute.

AGW: Is there any talk of someday doing a “Buffy” movie?

Michelle: I’m sure that there was tons of talk. ‘Buffy’ was my all-time favorite show before I was on it. So I loved Dawn. She was an awesome character and that was where I was at that point in my life. I was, you know, 14-17, which is hugely different. I’ll be 20 in October, so reprising a character is hard but never say never. I’d have to see the material and also I have so many projects that I want to do right now after Ice Princess. I believe every actor’s path is sort of set and you don’t want to veer too much away from moving on and growing as an actor.

AGW: Skaters have to go into it with their whole heart to succeed. Do you feel that way about acting? Don’t do it if you can’t do it full force?

Michelle: I think definitely. I know I’m incredibly lucky to have found my passion early in life, and the second that I say ‘it’s too hard’, then I’m done. Because my heart and soul are not going into my projects any more. But I think that in order to really give respect to your audience, you have to be there full force. And there are so many girls out there that are actors that are just about the hype. That’s fine, you’ll have your time, that’s cool, I respect you for your work. But what I want more than anything is longevity. Passion leads to longevity.

AGW: The last skater costume you wear in Ice Princess is absolutely gorgeous. Did you have any input into how it would look?

Michelle: I did. It was all hand done to me and each rhinestone was particularly placed, but I specifically was there (for fittings) because I wanted that moment to just be her crowning glory. It sort of feels like water. It just flows. And it felt so pretty.

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